A few days after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake triggered a tidal wave that devastated north-eastern Japan, Tokyo-based architect Keiji Ashizawa traveled to the coastal town of Ishinomaki. He was there to inspect the damage to a restaurant he had designed for a client a year earlier. "Everything was missing," says Ashizawa. "Some people only had tatami mats for doors." Because carpenters were rare, many people helped themselves. When Ashizawa met a store owner who was repairing his shop, he had an idea. He fitted out an empty store with some tools and obtained large planks of so-called Western Red Cedar, a light but robust type of wood. "I realized that people needed to make, repair and modify things themselves in order to rebuild their town." Creating something with their own hands would also help them deal with the trauma they were going through. It wasn't long before the first people came to the Ishinomaki Lab to learn how to build furniture. Ashizawa developed elegant, practical designs that could be made from standard pieces of wood with simple tools and little experience. Stools and benches, for example, which could be quickly integrated into communal spaces. The initiative was supported by the American furniture manufacturer Herman Miller.

The spirit of do-it-yourself - "monozukuri" in Japanese - is also exported all over the world by the "Ishinomaki Lab". In addition to regular DIY workshops for woodworking and furniture making in Ishinomaki and Tokyo, there have been similar projects in Manila, Singapore, Berlin, London, Guadalajara, Busan, Copenhagen and Detroit. "People didn't just make things in the workshops," says Ashizawa. "They also learned that design can solve problems." The "Ishinomaki Lab" not only shows what a profound influence craftsmanship can have on our lives - but also how design can be rethought in an environmentally and community-friendly way.